


Cringe

by rizahawkaye



Series: Antebellum [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Abuse, Anger, Angst, F/M, Friendship, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 05:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: The first time the needle met her flesh was the worst.





	Cringe

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a warm up while on the elliptical today. I'm writing about this particular moment in Riza's life in Buried Alive rn, so I figured this would be a good way for me to get inside her head and feel for her feelings about it all. I know it's a little "heavy" - but it is IS a heavy topic, in canon and fanon. As it should be.

The wet stench of the basement lingered like a fog in the air. Riza followed her father down the steps into this makeshift workshop tentatively, a table peering at her from around the corner of the wall. Straps gripped its legs and were bolted to the top of it to sit loosely on its surface. She swallowed a lump of sudden anxiety. Were those for her? Her father had told her that he would be using her for something. Was this part of it? Riza’s feet filled with lead, and each step came hard and slow and with much effort.

She’d never been down in the basement before. She wasn’t barred from it, but the damp, dim light and wet walls reminded her of a cell you read about in old stories; places where prisoners are tortured and slain and left to rot until their bones are all that’s left to give company to the next victim. Sometimes she feared that’s exactly what her father was doing to himself. He’d been much like a hermit for as long as she could remember. He was always holed up in this basement - in his cell. She shuddered.

Under the light of flickering candles Riza was able to make out stacks of tattered papers on his desk, and pieces of cloth with crude transmutation circles etched into them. She stayed at the bottom of the stairs while her father fiddled with needles and small bottles of dark liquid. He lit a few more candles by the tableside, illuminating more of the cell, making it shimmer.

He didn’t pass any words to her when he motioned for her to undress. He’d told her this much was expected of her. “You’re going to have to remove your shirt,” he’d said. She’d nodded at him like that was a completely warranted request, or like it didn’t make her skin crawl. She’s only ever removed her shirt in front of the girls at her school when she changed into and out of gym clothes, and even that made her feel uncomfortable. Being raised by a man like Berthold Hawkeye made Riza unfamiliar with intimacy - platonic or otherwise. Being stripped to the bone made her feel weak, like she was the target she shot for practice every evening. She felt his eyes on her as she slid her blouse off, letting it drip from her fingers to land on the slick floor. 

“The table,” he said. Riza’s chest filled with dread. Why that apprentice boy found his way into her head as she lay on her stomach for her father she couldn’t fathom, not even years later, but he was there. Poised and smiling and tucked under a blanket with her, his hair mussed up from the fabric rubbing over it. His hands splayed out to keep the sheet from touching the candle Riza had lit and sat between them to keep them awake as they drowsily swapped secrets from their day of study: “In English, you spell ‘friend’ like this,” Riza had told him, rubbing her finger into the dust at her feet. Roy bit his lip, contemplating the word. He smiled at her, her heart did a little flip like it always did when he smiled, and he said, “English, huh?” The word came with a taught accent as he said it, and she’d giggled. He’d scrunched his face up. 

“What’s the chemical breakdown of lead?” He’d asked, trying to trip her up the way she had him. When she answered correctly, the elements falling off her tongue as easily as her English words, he’d leaned forward and kissed her mouth. She touched the spot now, just barely flirting her fingers over it before her father seized her wrist and imprisoned it in a thick restraint.

The first time the needle met her flesh was the worst. It burned like a fire, and she’d cried hard. Her arms wrenched back reflexively as she tried to push her father away, claw at him, take every detail of his features off his face but he kept moving through her desperation. Slowly, deliberately, with a precision that Riza would adopt herself one day. Eventually, when the area became numb, she stopped protesting. She watched the flames of the candles flicker over a wall, which glimmered like stars.

“I’m sorry,” her father told her when he was pricking around her spine, somewhere near her coccyx. She could hear the press of a sob at the back of his throat, and so many words unsaid on his tongue. She wanted to bite back at him, shoot him like the squirrels and deer and pigs she shot around their cursed and quiet home. “I’m not a father at all.”

Riza thought that no truer words had ever been spoken.  

When he finished, he wiped a mild alcohol solution and wet towel over her wounds. Her wrists burned where the leather had worn into her skin, and the soggy air made them sting when they were released from their restraints. Her tears had dried. She stood from the table carefully, stiffly, and didn’t hand him a glance as she padded up the stairs. She could feel his eyes on her, but somewhere she knew in her heart that he was not watching her out of concern. He was admiring his work. Like his daughter was some kind of textbook he’d just published; a glorified collection of knowledge and secrets gathered through the pain of blood and tears.  _Her_  blood and tears.

She lugged a shirt on over her bare back when she reached her room, the blood from the imprints of ink seeping through the back of it. She didn’t care. She grabbed the rifle she kept by her bedside. It made her feel powerful. Her body ached but she made her way out of the house and into the orange light of the morning sun. A cool breeze spread over her, making the angry, burning lines in her back pulse with a momentary lapse of pain. She made a mental note to lay an iced cloth over her back after she’d found her breakfast.

“Don’t you ever sleep in?” Roy would have teased her from the porch, groggy and still pajama-clad.

“Roy,” she said now, her eyes searching the trees for movement with practiced care. “I wish I could.” 

 


End file.
